Bit of a drag to get through, but I feel like the enjoyment you get afterwards from having the knowledge makes it worth it. God this took ages.

She's just a badass and Jason needs to respect that

3.5 ⭐️

read medea

To quote Karen, happy Mother’s Day Medea. Killer of her own children

Medea is the story of Medea, wife to Jason (of Jason and the Argonauts, Jason and the Golden Fleece) etc. Medea aided Jason on his quest for the Golden Fleece, falling passionately in love with him and even killing her brother and (reputedly) dismembering his body so that they could flee her father who, being a good and just father, stopped to pick up the pieces of his son. Medea is generally regarded as a very intense, passionate woman. She’s the granddaughter of the Sun God Helios and therefore, not entirely human. Her love for Jason is all consuming and eventually, destructive.

In this play, Medea and Jason have fled to Corinth after the happenings of the Golden Fleece, where the King of Corinth, Creon, has given his daughter, Princess Glauce, to Jason to be his wife. Jason sets aside Medea to marry Glauce, rendering Medea so unstable that Creon correctly fears for his daughters life and orders Medea and her two children by Jason into exile. Medea, a rather master manipulator, asks for, and is granted by Creon, a day before she has to go into exile and this is all she needs to put her plan of vengeance into action.

Jason then enters to try and reason with Medea, explaining his motives for setting her aside and choosing to marry Glauce. They amount to basically the political gain but he swears that he would’ve made everyone ‘one big happy family’ and that if Medea hadn’t been so unreasonable, she could’ve stayed in Corinth (I think the inference is, as his mistress) and that her and the children would be well looked after and taken care of and that there would be no hostilities. Medea, as the spurned woman, rejects him and orders him leave but as her plan forms in her mind, she summons him back and asks him if her children might remain behind, be raised by him and not suffer for her sins. Jason agrees and Medea sends the two children to the Princess bearing gifts, golden robes and a crown, which are poisoned. She correctly guesses that Glauce will accept the gifts, being swayed by the beauty of the gold, which the Princess does. The gifts immediately poison her, stripping her flesh from her bones, melting her and as her distraught father rushes in and gathers her up, he is poisoned too.

Medea then decides that her two children must die, to make her revenge on Jason complete. Rather than leave them behind to either offer him some comfort in his grief, or possibly killed by the Corinthians for their innocent part in her plot, Medea murders them both with her own hands and then denies Jason the chance to bury them, taking their bodies with her as she flees to Athens in a chariot gifted to her by her grandfather the Sun God.

Medea was first performed in 431BC. It’s a short play, only about 30 pages in length and surprisingly easy to read. The hardest part for me was forgetting about it being 2011 and trying to read it in the way people watching it at the time would’ve taken it. Medea herself is portrayed as a sympathetic, albeit unstable character, who has married for love (unusual in this time) and given up everything for him. She killed her brother, she fled her homeland, has gone into exile, will never see her family again, all for Jason, only to be cast aside by him. In the time men could do this and women had very little say in these types of matters. Medea is considered a feminist play as the sympathetic portrayal of Medea relates to her helplessness in the male-dominated society. All her choices are taken away from her – her husband abandons her and then she is forced to go into exile. As she sees it, she has only one option left open to her now. That of revenge.

Still it’s hard as a mother (and as a rational human being) to excuse her actions reading it in this day and age. Her revenge is so complete, murdering Jason’s new wife, who presumably is just going along with her father’s wishes and marrying the man he has given to her, and also the King (possibly inadvertently there). Medea then goes one step further and murders her own children, which is where any sympathy for her ended. She had already secured an asylum earlier in the play, in exchange for helping the King of Athens with an infertility issue, and could’ve easily escaped with her children. Instead she chooses to murder them, and although she does claim so that they do not come to harm from others, I believe the majority of her reasoning is to further injure Jason. He loses not only his new young Princess wife, but also his two sons.

Jason himself is portrayed in the play as smug and kind of over-confident. Clearly although Medea proved her capacity for devotion (and also the lengths she will go to in order to get what she wants) in killing her own brother to assist him, he didn’t seem particularly worried that she would turn that vicious streak towards him, so he obviously wasn’t too bright either. Even the King was more wary of what she could do, but he erred gravely in granting her the day’s grace before her exile.

i'm very disappointed to find that the present edition of the Chicago series has revised all of these valued mid-century translations in dubious ways and has even replaced some of them. the new Medea by Oliver Taplin is like a gloss for 12 year olds...

I didn't know what I was getting into when I found this book, but it was surprisingly easy to read. Euripides has a very enjoyable way of telling his stories.

The Goodreads listing has different plays listed, but this collection contains Medea, Hippolytus, Electra and Helen.

I spoke about Helen on TikTok and have woken up to comments about 'fixit fics' ever since, which is hilarious and has made me realise that Greek mythology and its retellings and remixes really scratches the same part of my brain that fanfic did when I partook. The more you know about yourself.

Medea - 5/5
Hecabe - 4/5
Electra - 3/5
Heracles - 3/5

"Manhandled from a foreign land like so much pirate loot, here I have no mother, brother, relative, no one to offer me a port, a refuge from catastrophe."

Is it just me, or is Euripides the most feminist of writers, not just in the classical age but also of today? Heroic women stand front-centre of all the stories in this volume— Alcestis, Medea, Alcmene, Phaedra whose tales are told with so much sympathy and understanding. It was eye-opening for me to see that even though the conventions may be patriarchal— the writer’s heart clearly lies with the women and their plight. He highlights their injustices and their perspective. I enjoyed this so much.